Paragraph Panel: Space After values not accurate?

[walt.farrell]

If you create a text frame, and type some text into it, and check the Paragraph Panel, the "Space After" value defaults to 12 points. It doesn't matter what the font size is, the Space After is always 12.

That seems odd, because if you're using 12pt text that gives you basically an empty line between paragraphs, but if you're using 144pt text you get only 1/12 of an empty line between paragraphs. But maybe there's some typographic reason for that, and that's not really what this post is about. It's just something that seems a bit odd that I don't yet understand.

What this post is about is the accuracy of that 12pt "Space After" value.

If I have 2 paragraphs of 12pt text, I can measure the space between them.

If I create 2 more paragraphs of 72pt text (same text), and I measure the space between them, I get a slightly larger value.

And if I create 2 more paragraphs of 144pt text (same text), and I measure the space between them, I get a still larger value.

The space between the paragraphs should be consistently 12 points, as a point is an invariant unit of measurement.

space-after.afpub

[Pure!]

I found this problem too, How to solve TT

[Wosven]

I reseted the value to 0. Space after isn't needed but for heading, and I'd rather choose when I want one and wich value.

It's not an automatic value, but a fixed one. Perhaps later we'll be able to select the same options as in leading (multiple, fixed, etc.), that could be helpfull.

 

But it is (in this exampe: baseline + 12 pt + leading).

For measure, we display a grid of 12 pt, but the text isn't aligned on the grid.
With a baseline = 0, each line is distant from the next one by 12 pt.

With baseline = 84 pt, distance is 12 + 84 pt.

With auto leading, I suspect MY measure isn't acurate, since I found 99.08 and it should be 99.14 pt:

space-after2.afpub

[Dave Harris]

On 8/3/2019 at 2:17 PM, walt.farrell said:

If you create a text frame, and type some text into it, and check the Paragraph Panel, the "Space After" value defaults to 12 points. It doesn't matter what the font size is, the Space After is always 12.

That seems odd, because if you're using 12pt text that gives you basically an empty line between paragraphs, but if you're using 144pt text you get only 1/12 of an empty line between paragraphs. But maybe there's some typographic reason for that, and that's not really what this post is about. It's just something that seems a bit odd that I don't yet understand.

What this post is about is the accuracy of that 12pt "Space After" value.

If I have 2 paragraphs of 12pt text, I can measure the space between them.

If I create 2 more paragraphs of 72pt text (same text), and I measure the space between them, I get a slightly larger value.

And if I create 2 more paragraphs of 144pt text (same text), and I measure the space between them, I get a still larger value.

The space between the paragraphs should be consistently 12 points, as a point is an invariant unit of measurement.

space-after.afpub

It looks like you are measuring from descender to ascender. The distance being set is baseline to baseline. For your 72pt text which you have set with a leading of 74.4pt, that distance should be 74.4 + 12 = 86.4pt. That is the distance I am getting.

The default Space after is 12pt, and it stays as 12pt because there's no mechanism for it to scale with the text size.